


can i have a plus one?

by carbonbased000, earlgreytea68



Category: Fall Out Boy
Genre: COVID-19, Coronavirus, M/M, Pandemics, Quarantine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:01:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23727991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carbonbased000/pseuds/carbonbased000, https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlgreytea68/pseuds/earlgreytea68
Summary: Quarantine side-hustle, and Patrick checks his phone, if you know what I mean.
Relationships: Patrick Stump/Pete Wentz
Comments: 40
Kudos: 152





	can i have a plus one?

**Author's Note:**

> This all started with an idea from carbon. I wrote the beginning, and she picked up and wrote the perfect ending. Thank you for the inspiration to start, and for finishing it so beautifully, and for everyone who encouraged the germination of the idea!
> 
> Title from [Check Your Phone](https://youtu.be/sVaw2ggTydc?t=102).

Pete says, casually, in the middle of their indefinite quarantine, “So, I’ve been working on this song.”

It’s an odd way for him to phrase it. Usually he just sends Patrick lyrics. Patrick glances at his phone on the kitchen counter. He’s got Pete on speaker while he works on making meatloaf. Patrick’s approach to quarantine is that maybe this is a great opportunity to learn how to cook actual meals for human consumption. Pete’s approach to quarantine is to figure out how many different L.A. eateries will deliver to his house. Somewhere in there might be a metaphor for their entire relationship but Patrick feels like everything they do inevitably is a metaphor for the underlying relationship. So Patrick, his hands squishing through meat and egg and breadcrumbs, says, “Like, writing a song?” because it just doesn’t sound like Pete means he’s writing lyrics.

“I don’t know. Kinda? It’s like… These people, I met them, their grandfather plays the trumpet… You know.”

Patrick doesn’t know. This is incoherent. He frowns and squishes his meatloaf some more. “No. What? The trumpet? I play the trumpet.”

“You play everything, Trick.”

“Not everything.”

“The point is, I think I’m going to do the vocals, too.”

Patrick raises his eyebrows at his phone. He wishes they were Facetiming suddenly. “You’re going to sing?”

“No, not really, I’m going to… I don’t know. Speak. You know how I do.”

 _Don’t overwork the meat!_ the recipe warns him. Patrick takes a step away from the meatloaf and says, “Hang on,” to Pete. He washes his hands thoughtfully, and then he picks up his phone, the better to focus on this conversation. “So you…wrote a song?”

“Not really, I did, like, the lyrics and the general…aesthetic, I guess, a little.”

Which sounds like exactly how Pete writes songs. “With who?” Patrick is utterly bewildered, floored, ten minutes ago he was just making meatloaf during a pandemic, you know, just a regular day in quarantine, and now Pete’s _cheating_ on him.

“Huh?”

And Pete sounds _distracted_ as he’s delivering this bombshell news. “Who translated your aesthetic into a song?” Patrick tries to sound calm as he asks it.

“Oh, these dudes I know who live in London.”

Pete sounds deliberately cagey to Patrick. “Do I know them?”

“Not really. We met on the internet.”

“You met some guys from London on the internet and decided to write a song with them?” Patrick feels a little bit dizzy.

“Yeah, they had a good idea.”

Patrick doesn’t understand why he feels so dizzy, so knocked off-balance. He says, “ _I_ have good ideas.”

Pete laughs. He _laughs_. And then he says, “Oh, that’s the Postmates guy, gotta go be contactless in delivery, if you know what I mean.”

Patrick says, “You can’t turn that into an innuendo,” to the dead air of a terminated phone call.

He puts his phone down and frowns at his meatloaf and way overworks the meat.

***

He calls Joe.

“How goes your quarantine, Mr. Stump?” Joe asks him.

Joe’s probably having a great quarantine, Patrick thinks. He’s probably smoking lots of quality weed and writing endless amazing guitar riffs and meanwhile Patrick’s quarantine is mediocre meatloaf and creative infidelity.

Patrick answers, “Pete’s got this song thing he’s working on.”

“Yeah, with the dudes in London.” Joe also sounds distracted. Why can’t anyone but Patrick seem to focus on this _very important topic_?

“Do you know them?” demands Patrick.

“No, I don’t know, Pete met them on the internet or something.”

“They could be serial killers,” Patrick notes. Serial killers lurk all over the internet, don’t they?

Joe laughs. “Well, if you’re going to make friends with a serial killer, I guess choose one who lives very far away from you during a quarantine.”

“This isn’t _funny_ ,” Patrick fumes.

“No, this isn’t _anything_ ,” Joe agrees affably. “He’s been cooped up in his house with nothing to do, you know Pete can’t go more than two or three minutes without falling in love with some half-assed idea, he was bound to get started on something.”

“I thought he’d write another book or start a podcast or learn how to sew,” Patrick says.

“What do you care?” Joe asks.

“Huh?” is the only response Patrick can think of.

“What do you care that Pete did some side thing? We’ve all got side hustles.”

“No, that’s not—I mean—That’s not what I mean, that’s not the _point_ —”

“Are you jealous?” Joe asks, and maybe Joe is teasing, but it feels deadly serious to Patrick.

“No,” he denies. “I am not _jealous_.”

He is ragingly fucking jealous.

***

Patrick has a long debate with himself about Facetiming Pete.

Patrick also has a lot a lot of scotch so, like, yeah. The drunk Patrick wins the debate against the sober Patrick and Facetimes Pete.

“Yo,” Pete says, looking curiously at him when he answers. “Are you drunk?”

“Fuck you,” Patrick says instead of answering the question, because it’s annoying Pete could tell just with a simple glance at Patrick.

Pete laughs. “I’m sad, you should have called me at the beginning, we could have gotten drunk together.” Pete’s on his couch. Patrick watches him settle in, like they’re going to have a nice cuddly conversation.

Because drunk Patrick is making really excellent decisions tonight, Patrick says accusingly, “You wrote lyrics for someone else.”

Pete looks quizzical. “What?”

“Don’t play dumb,” Patrick snaps. “You knew exactly what you were doing when you did it.”

Pete sits up slowly, his expression sliding from fond indulgence to miffed irritation. “What the fuck,” he starts.

Patrick cuts him off. “You wrote down words – you wrote down _your words_ – and then you sent them off to _strangers_.”

“This is about the song?”

“You sent them off to people who _weren’t me_ ,” Patrick continues, because he is on a roll here. “You sent them off to _other people_. _Your words_. How could you do that? How could you _do_ that?”

“Are you for real right now?” Pete retorts.

“Yeah, I’m for fucking real,” Patrick rejoins. “Did we not have a thing? A _thing_? Where we write songs together? That thing?”

“We still write songs together, as far as I know. Or are you breaking up with me again?”

“Oh, shut up, that was a decade ago now, and anyway, you’re the one cheating.”

“I’m not _cheating_.”

“You literally wrote words down on a piece of paper and _sent them to someone else_. How isn’t that cheating?” Honestly, drunk Patrick could be a Supreme-Court-caliber lawyer, he should talk to Pete’s dad about that.

“I typed the words, actually,” says Pete semantically.

“Asshole,” Patrick spits out.

“And anyway – _anyway_ – you are one to fucking talk about _cheating_. You’ve got side projects all over the fucking place, you are always taking people’s words who aren’t mine, and I bite my tongue and I say _nothing_.”

“What are you talking about? Whose words do I take? They’re always yours, _always_. If I’m not using yours, I’m using mine.”

“You write film scores.”

“Those don’t have words!”

“They have a million words! They have the words of the movie!”

“So this is about the film scores?” Patrick asks incredulously. “You’re jealous I write film scores, so you sent your lyrics to sketchy people in London?”

“They’re not sketchy, and Patrick, _mon cheri_ , I’ve got news for you, _you’re_ the one who’s jealous.”

“Of course I’m jealous! We have a thing, and it’s ours, and now I know that there are words that came from you, little pieces of your heart and soul, that you just gave away to someone else, as if they weren’t…as if they weren’t _precious_. You never, ever treat your words like they’re precious, you just throw them out there and you leave yourself so open and vulnerable and exposed and do you understand that I can’t protect you and keep you safe if you’re just going to throw words all over the place?” Patrick runs out of air, which is noteworthy because he’s got great breath control. On Facetime, Pete is blinking at his speech, and Patrick is tired, tired of being jealous, tired of making meatloaf, tired of being drunk, tired of not knowing, of uncertainty, of pandemic outside and Petelessness inside.

“Patrick,” breathes Pete.

“Can I come over?” Patrick asks, begs, pleads. “I think maybe… This quarantine…” Patrick doesn’t say _Please, I think I need to touch you and make sure you’re still safe, even if you’re not still mine_.

“You can’t drive like this. And, Patrick, I… I didn’t mean to make you think I don’t cherish our songwriting, cherish every word I give you. I give you…different words. This wasn’t about not wanting you, this was about… The song’s about checking your phone, Patrick, you hate technology.”

Patrick leans his head back on the couch and watches Pete, in his own house and also in Patrick’s hand. Maybe technology isn’t so bad. “I can do technology stuff,” Patrick says.

“Yeah, definitely the way you know someone’s good at technology stuff is when they call it ‘technology stuff.’”

Patrick breathes for a moment. Drunk Patrick, making stellar decisions, says, “I worry so much that you don’t take care of yourself. I’ve worried about that half my life. And now there’s this quarantine and I find out you’re writing songs with other people and please, just, like, please be _safe_.”

Pete looks at him for a long moment. And then Pete says softly, “You can’t drive right now, but I can.”

Patrick smiles. “I made a meatloaf.”

“Is it good?”

“No.”

“Can’t wait,” says Pete.

“Bring your stupid song, I want to hear it.”

“I’m bringing my stupid song, and also Uno. We’re going to have to do something during quarantine, we can’t write songs 24/7.”

“I bet,” says drunk Patrick, still making great decisions, “we could come up with ways to pass the time during quarantine.”

Pete grins.

***

Patrick hasn’t sobered up completely when Pete gets there, but whatever made him take all those wild chances, say all those wild things out loud, is starting to wear off; he feels unbalanced, or maybe perfectly balanced on the cusp of a precipice. He can still walk back from this, he’s pretty sure – but is it more or less risky than jumping into the dark?

Pete comes in, and he looks – rumpled and messy, in a pair of absurd baggy sweatpants and an even more absurd hoodie, too large and too long, its sleeves covering half his gloved hands, and he looks amazing anyway. He’s wearing a mask, a black one, and a blue knitted hat, and from the narrow strip of face that’s left exposed his eyes shine as brightly as they’ve ever done. Patrick takes a step towards him, breathless with the urge to get close, to touch, but then falters as Pete tears off his mask and hat, stuffs them in the pockets of his hoodie, and he stands there, smiling sunnily at him, and it’s so… _normal_. It’s just Pete, his best friend, in his house, like hundreds of other times.

“Okay, wait, let me do the thing,” Pete says.

“The thing?” Patrick asks.

“The quarantine thing, with the gloves and the handwashing. I didn’t touch anything, just the inside of my car, but, you know, just to be on the safe side.”

“Right, sure, that thing,” Patrick says, and then he watches Pete toe off his sneakers and follows him into the kitchen, sticking close to his side. He dutifully opens the trash can for him as Pete throws in the gloves. The lid bangs shut with an air of finality.

Pete starts washing his hands very carefully in the sink, following the proper procedure. Hopefully he’s not so taken with this safety thing that he intends to keep to six feet of distance between them, Patrick thinks, and he gets a bit closer to hand him a paper towel.

“Thanks,” says Pete, and turns around. Now they’re standing in Patrick’s kitchen, staring at each other, and Patrick should probably move away, but he can’t. Pete doesn’t move away either, because self-preservation has never been his forte.

“I’m not sure the meatloaf is, like, edible,” Patrick says, and they’re so close that he feels the air leave Pete’s lips as he laughs softly.

“It’s fine,” he says. “Wanna order in and listen to my stupid song?”

“Yeah, later,” Patrick says, because suddenly he can’t take this anymore. He raises his hand and puts it on Pete’s shoulder – no plan nor pretext, he just needs to _touch_. Pete pulls him into a hug, spontaneous like a reflex, and Patrick breathes him in, and holds him tight, and feels every cell in his body relax at the contact.

He doesn’t trust himself to talk. His brain feels like it isn’t working at full speed, thinking _safe_ and _mine_ and little else. He doesn’t even think it’s the alcohol anymore – the alcohol has been burned out of his blood by this creepy primal need to bite Pete on the back of his neck to stake his claim, like a wolf in a National Geographic documentary or something, because that’s _his_ , goddamn it. But he can’t, can he. Because–

“But you can,” Pete says, and either Patrick said that aloud, or it’s one of those times when Pete can read his mind. “Whatever you want. Whatever you need.”

“Yeah?” Patrick asks, and thinks of Pete’s grin in the little screen of his iPhone, earlier, and asks himself a rhetorical question that goes, _When has he ever said no to me?_

Pete leans back to look him in the eye as he replies, “Yeah,” and his lips curl up, his eyes crinkle at the corners, and Patrick slides his fingers into the hair that’s starting to curl and silver, right at the nape of his neck, that vulnerable spot that he really wants to bite, and kisses his smile until they’re both breathless.


End file.
